1228 rEPortT-—1885. 
Clothes are made of the inner bark of a tree, but some wear skins. The 
manufacture of cotton cloth, on the Chizi, is giving way to English calico. The 
Anachusa use a mordart in dyeing. 
The architecture of the housesissimple. All houses are round, but the different 
tribes construct them differently. Pottery is the work of the women, and is done 
by hand. Some of these vessels are very neat. Grain is pounded in wocden 
mortars, and ground by rubbing between two stones. Their most common dish is 
a stiff porridge. 
Natives measure time by days, lunar months, and years; they thrust a stick into 
the earth and also use the middle finger of the hand to form rude sundials. Their 
knowledge of the facts of natural history is surprisingly accurate, and they have 
names for all the things they see. Their practice of medicine is more the use of 
charms, but they know some plants with powerful properties. Their ordeal poison 
bark, called mwave, is the Erythrophleuwm guineense, which if not vomited causes 
death. Their most deadly poison for arrows is the gall of the crocodile. They 
use several emmenagogues, and know to pierce the membranes to produce abortion. 
Obstetric practice is in the hands of old women, but if nature fails, patients are left 
to die; yet the Anachusa know how to rectify the malpresentation of a calf. In 
surgery they know how to set fractures with splints of reeds, reduce dislocations, 
and bleed by cupping, and by opening the temporal artery. Lacerated wounds 
they dress with charcoal and oil; an indolent ulcer is treated by scrubbing the 
surface with the core of a mealie cob. 
Slavery is common, but infanticide is not practised. Polygamy is the general 
custom. Among the Atonga, a girl is often betrothed before she is born. The 
Angoni give cattle to a father-in-law on marriage, and among them immorality is 
punished by death. 
Land nominally belongs to a chief, but really to a tribe ; occupation being the 
only proof of personal or family possession. For the repression of crime, murder is 
punishable by death, but blood-money is often accepted. A person attempting to 
steal, if it is dark, may be lulled, but if recognisable must not be so treated. ‘The 
ordeals in common use are by boiling water and the mwave poison. The government 
is patriarchal. The plebs have no voice init; but among the Angoni they use 
the songs sung at their martial dances to express their political feeling. 
All the tribes believe in the immortality of the soul, some in its transmigration. 
Among the Angoni ancestral worship is the only religious conception; but among 
the Anyanja there is also the idea of a deity, and among the Anachusa the idea 
of a Supreme Good and an Evil Spirit. Their folk-lore contains the common Bantu 
story of the origin of death, and among the Angoni there is a legend of a wooden 
Tower of Babel. 
The languages all belong to the Bantu family. The characteristic of this is 
the principle of euphonic or alliteral concord, by which the euphonic letter or 
syllable of the noun recurs in the depending parts of speech in the sentence, 
thus :—My big cup fell and is broken—T7shiko tshatshikuru tshanga tshinagwa 
ndimo ¢shinaswedwa, where the concord is marked by italics. The verb is very 
elaborate, the simple form having a positive and a negative conjugation of the 
active and passive voices. Secondary and tertiary derivative forms can be made 
from the simple form, and each of these passes through all the inflections of the 
simple form, A complete paradigm of the Chinyanja verb would show more than 
27,000 different examples of the third person singular. What is the meaning of 
the word ‘savage’ P 
9. Exhibition of the Skeleton of a Strandlouper from South Africa. 
By Professor A. Macatister, I’.2.S. 
10. A brief Account of the Nicobar Islanders, with special reference to the 
Inland Tribe of Great Nicobar. By E. H. May. 
In the interior of Great Nicobar there is a wild race, styling themselves ‘ Shab 
Dawa,’ of whom as yet little information has been obtainable; they are distinct 
